comforting your teen communication

Comforting Part 3: The Importance of Biting Your Tongue

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Comforting your teen series Part 3

A common roadblock that keeps kids from confiding in their parents is the “I’ll solve it” scenario. Teens want to be heard and seen just like us. They don’t want someone telling them what to do about their sadness.  They want to be listened to and comforted.

I see this all the time with parents and teens. I’m a parent too, so I get it.  We want our kids to feel better. We suffer when we see them in distress so we try to solve the problem as fast as we can. Not only to stop their suffering but to stop our own pain from watching them suffer. Our gut reaction is to tell them what to do to fix the situation, which isn’t very comforting and leads to disconnection rather than connection which is why they came to you in the first place. We skip over their feelings and try to solve them. This can be very invalidating and can leave them feeling even more overwhelmed with a list of todos.  “Why don’t you just…”, “you need to… .“  Ouch. Seems very different from the comforting playground scenario when your little one scrapes their knee. In these moments, it’s best to bite your tongue and listen. To be clear, I’m not saying we need to treat them like we did when they were little. It’s really just the pattern of interaction that needs to be the same.  Listen, comfort, reassure… and then maybe later help them solve it… if they invite us to.

Talk with your kids about their struggles, life’s difficulties, and mental health. It helps them normalize their experience and struggles. Talking with them fosters a sense of constant safety, reducing their sense of aloneness and shame. It cultivates closeness and healthy attachment. It can also help them make sense of their feelings and experiences – creating a state of congruence between emotions and thoughts, which will help reduce stress. It allows for flexibility in their daily lives, inviting in how they feel and moving through the changes in their emotional states.

When they can see they can share their messiness with you, and you can handle it and comfort them, they feel safe to bring it to you again.

Please read the other blogs this series on Comforting your Teen:

 

comforting your teen empathy

Comforting Part 2: How Empathy Looks as Your Kids Grow Up

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Comforting your teen series Part 2

Think about when your kids were little and they scraped their knee. Or when someone hurt their feelings on the playground and they were filled with sadness. Their first reaction was to call out or run to you.  You sat with them, listened, and reassured them it would all be ok.  Your empathetic reaction, soothing voice, and physical touch made them feel they could go on, maybe even run back over to the playground and try again.  Your presence in the midst of their sadness helped them feel comforted, safe, and that they could make it through their difficult moments and hard feelings.

It’s easy to know something is wrong with our kids when they’re little. They are so much more transparent in how they are feeling and what they need. And as parenting goes, knowing what to do for our little one’s scraped knee is easy to figure out. As they get older, the issues they face can get more complex. Issues may arise that we don’t know how to maneuver through ourselves. We can feel unsure of how to handle situations and how to guide them. It can create fear in our ability to parent them. This is normal and can be overcome.

Over the years, our kids end up reaching for us less and less because they begin to mature and start figuring things out on their own.  But that doesn’t mean they still don’t need us to be there in those difficult moments for comfort.  I think there’s an unfounded belief that teens only want their friends and don’t want to share their deep feelings and troubles with their parents.  From where I sit in my office with teens, that’s just not true. I hear comments like, “Oh we don’t talk about stuff like this at home” or “we talk about a lot of things but emotions and how we feel isn’t one of them” or “I wish I could feel comfortable talking about this stuff with my parents”.  I see this over and over again. Teens and young adults need and want this open door to talking about the hard stuff. They want the closeness and connection that talking about deeper feelings brings.

Once I help teens break down the walls that prevent them from confiding in a parent, I see a sense of relief.  They describe feeling lighter. They feel less alone in dealing with their stuff.  When teens and young adults know they can go there with their parents and talk about their difficult feelings and find comfort, they can face their challenges with so much more ease.

Please read the other blogs this series on Comforting your Teen:

 

comforting teens therapy boulder

Comforting Part 1: Breaking Down Barriers

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Comforting your teen series Part 1

I spend my days being with people in their emotional world. I help them process and express how they are feeling, sit with their own emotions, and at times, tolerate the uncomfortableness that emotions can cause for us all.

I help make sense of what they’re feeling and help them see how their feelings and emotions drive their thoughts and actions. I’m able to do this for two reasons. One, they allow me to, which is an amazing privilege. And two, because I provide a safe space. I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong for how they’re feeling. I don’t carry judgement for what they feel. I am just listening.

Because my relationship with them is somewhat one-sided, I use my own emotions to help guide my time with my clients. I express how I’m feeling about them in an empathetic way, but that is where it stops.  I don’t carry along a history of injuries from my relationship with them, making our interaction a complex dynamic of debate, blame, and defensiveness. Instead, they feel seen, heard, and validated in their own experience. And they don’t need to care for my emotions while trying to figure out their own.   It truly is an open space for a client to be the center of attention to muddle through their own feelings with someone more or less holding their hand.

As a parent, you have a more difficult job than me in comforting your teen.   You have the history of the relationship that can get in the way, a pattern of interaction that ensues during stressful moments, and your own feelings to maneuver through. However, you comforting your teen can be much more powerful than me comforting them.

Over the next few posts in the Comforting Your Teen Series, I’m going to talk about different ways you can connect with your teen and help create a safe space for them to be heard.

Please read the other blogs this series on Comforting your Teen:

 

3 Steps to Keep Your Teen on Track & Keep Your Interaction Positive

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What percentage of interaction between you and your teen is positive?

Or should I say, “perceived” positive?  I ask this question with every teenager and family I work with.  You would be surprised by the answers I receive and disconnect between parent and teen on what is actually perceived as a positive interaction between them.

The Disconnect between Parent and Teen

There are so many to-dos during the day for our teens.   Getting to school on time, getting their homework done, getting chores completed, going to their extracurricular activities, etc.  If you can imagine a day in your teen’s life you would see that they don’t have much control over their day.  They are told when to rise when to leave the house when to eat, even when they are allowed to go to the bathroom in school. Parents see the interaction with their teens as the parents best effort to keep their teens on track.  However, teens may view this as negative interaction.  Sometimes it becomes what the relationship is about; coaxing them to stay on task, getting to places on time and their to-do’s done. This perceived negative interaction can drain a relationship and begin distancing you from your teen.

3 steps on how to keep your teen on track and keep the percentage of your interaction positive at the same time.

  1. Ask them these questions:  What percentage of interaction do you view as positive between us?  Ask for each parent independently. Ask what do you attribute the negative interaction to be? How can the negative interaction be reduced?  What can they do to reduce the negative interaction?  What can you as a parent do to reduce the negative interaction?
  2. Putting expectations in place. Sitting down with your teen and asking them what they think should be expected of them with chores, and schoolwork?  What do they need from you to assist them to stay on track so the interaction doesn’t have to be negative? What is their part in keeping themselves on track so you don’t have to be negative Nelly?
  3. Make sure you have downtime with your teen.   This can be throwing the football, watching a favorite show, getting your nails done, checking out and going camping with them and their friends, taking a scheduled hooky day, planning a special vacation of their choice.

Breaking down your interactions with your teens from a place of positive can really change how you interact with your teen.